How This College Student Built a 250 Million Social Follower Reach

Learn the keys to working with social media influencers.

In today’s world of online marketing, influencers have become one of the best mediums to connect with millions of people. Influencers are the people you see on Instagram or Facebook, with at least hundreds of thousands of followers. These people often have a loyal fan base, and a post about your brand on their page can ignite your business.

The hard part of influencer marketing is finding the right ones to work with. That is why Victor Ricci started Trend Pie, an influencer marketing agency that features a way to get low-cost installs for apps. Victor, a former influencer himself, who grew a vine account to over 1.4-million followers, understands the ins and outs of how influencers can impact a brand.

Though still in college, Victor’s growing agency has worked with major brands like Unilever, AOL, and Yahoo. What started as a way for him to grow his own brand has since turned into a full fledged agency with hundreds of clients.

Clients are attracted to Trend Pie because their team has a track record of making apps go viral. As an example, Drunk Mode, a mobile app that helps people stay safe on a night out, was trending three times this month because of Trend Pie’s efforts. This led to tens of thousands of downloads for the app and a boost in organic ranking.

If you’re a brand looking to utilize influencers to market your company, Victor has shared his top three tips below:

Cross Promote

Though it may sound simple, there are now dozens of ways to cross promote across social channels. The best way to cross promote is to find another brand or influencer who has a similar number of followers and create content together. This way you can share it on each other’s pages and gain exposure from your partner’s followers.

To see this in action, I recommend checking out Arsenic on Instagram. Almost all their posts are cross promotional in nature, as they collaborate with some of the world’s most creative influencers. In their Instagram stories, they even cross promote by tagging the person in the story, which enables you to then check out their profile. This is a win-win for the brand and the person they’ve partnered with.

Know Your Audience

One of the most overlooked parts of influencer marketing is connecting with the right people. Brands often think that exposure counts as exposure and they don’t think about who they are getting exposed to. When working with influencers, a key is to understand their audience. If their audience doesn’t relate to your products, then you’re wasting your time.

As an example, check out the influencers Cork Supply Co works with. This growing brand of premium cork accessories reached out to influencers in the street scene space that align with their brand. This enabled their cross promotion to be targeted towards people who connect with the products they create.

Focus on Engagement

There is a flaw in social media. The major influencers with millions of followers rarely have highly engaged audiences. When looking for influencers to work with, it’s better to focus on the relationship that exists between the influencer and the followers.

This means that building a campaign with a with an influencer who has 10,000 loyal fans will likely get better results for campaigns than if you connected with another influencer with 100,000 generic and disinterested fans.

With trends pointing towards the importance of social media for brands, working with influencers will become crucial for your business, if it hasn’t already. When getting into influencer marketing, remember to cross promote, know your audience, and focus on engagement. This approach will lead to results, just like Trend Pie preaches.Opinions expressed here by Contributors are their own.

Nathan Resnick is a serial entrepreneur who currently serves as CEO of Sourcify, a marketplace of the world’s top manufacturers. In the past, Nathan has brought dozens of products to market, been a part of campaigns on Kickstarter raising a total of over $1mil, used to live in China, and knows the ins and outs of how to turn ideas into realities. He currently writes for Entrepreneur and the Huffington Post.